PTSD
by Aran'sApprentice-Meahow
Summary: They're not "sweet." Mostly it’s because they don’t remember what sweet means. Shell-shocked might be the best word for what they are. Old emotions die hard and mostly they hurt but sometimes, just sometimes that's a good thing... Royai


Hi guys. I was amazed at this when it came out of my head yesterday evening. (though fanfiction pretended to hate me for a while and wouldn't let me post T_T ) Fullmetal Alchemist chapter 101 will do that to you, people: read the manga!! (As always, Roy and Riza belong to that genius, Arakawa-sensei. So help us all, she'll keep 'em alive.)

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They're not _sweet._

Mostly it's because they don't remember what sweet means. Shell-shocked might be the best word for what they are. They lie next to each other in bed at night and sometimes they just stare at the ceiling without touching, feeling the presence of the other, hearing their breathing. Some days they don't even talk unless they have to and that's when they smile at one another and eat and drink and go about their work.

They both have work. There is always work. There are letters to be answered, there are people to talk to always arriving at their home, there is research, there is paperwork in mountains and mountains. She is no longer technically in the military, but she carries a gun at her hip at all times. When she sees a shadow cross the street behind him she breaks out into a cold sweat. She knows there is a time when her hands will begin to shake and her eyesight will begin to fail and that terrifies her.

They haunt one another's dreams. Their deaths haunt one another at night; half a dozen times each week, maybe, one of them wakes up from the dream of blood pouring over the sheets, from blackness, from gunshots, from screams, from tears, from both. Then he will blunder up and feel her next to him, will paw at her shoulder in the darkness, feel the warmth of her face on his hands, and he will slump back against the pillows and curse himself silly with relief. Or she will shudder out of sleep with a gasp, freeze with her eyes bolt open, not knowing where she is, eyes desperately raking the ceiling for information, her senses going haywire until she picks up the sound of his breathing. Only then will she move, stretch out a trembling hand to his side, curl up against his back so that she can listen to his heart beating steady through his shoulder blade.

They've come to a mutual conclusion not to go to the bathroom during the night. If they have to, they must wake the other; they can't leave while the other is asleep. Once, in the chill darkness of early morning, some sound snagged his breathing in his sleep: his eyes opened to nothing, the sheets neatly placed back where they belonged, the window creaking open in a light breeze, the floors barren and full of shuddering shadow, the impossible traces of terror slick across ground where there was no evidence of any movement—

In the bathroom she was startled by one curdling scream: "LIEUTENANT!!" Every octave of his voice bellowing across the ridiculous hugeness of the president's house, sending her vision red with shock. She dropped the soap and ran, searched for a gun, for anything, awful possibilities raining through her head—

"LIEUTENANT!" In terror it is the first name that comes to him. They use their actual names only when they are thinking about it. A lifetime's habit is hard to break.

"_I'm coming, Sir!_"

The sound of her voice stops him in his tracks, anger and relief barraging his brain at once. And her footsteps pound into the dark room; she's pulled the gun from the medicine cabinet, he can see it in her posture and the glint of the barrel in the moonlight—

Their voices explode simultaneously:

"_What's wrong, what is it?_"

"_Where the fuck were you?_"

The lamp by the door gives a hollow sigh of gas and then flickers on; the fingers of her left hand have fumbled at its switch for useless seconds and finally succeeded, while the gun in her right hand trembles forward, thrust at the shadows. They try again for communication, gasping for breath: he standing stunnned in the middle of the room with thunder in his brow, she at the door with her eyes darting about for threats.

"_What is it, I was just in the bathroom_—"

"_Put the fucking gun down!_"

"_You were SCREAMING! I thought_—"

"…_in the fucking bathroom!?_"

"_STOP YELLING! _" She doesn't curse at him the way he curses at her; someone might once have taken it for insubordination. Even now, when it hardly matters, this habit too stays with her. They are silent; the realization of the folly of it all empties the room of atmosphere.

"We're all right, Sir," she blusters, watches his face un-freeze; the anger crushes down to the point of his chin and he follows it with his face, letting out a hard breath and crumpling it into his hands.

"You were gone," he mutters; looks up to see her hand dripping soap down the shininess of the gun that has fallen to her side. "I was afraid…"

"I would lose you," she finishes, breathing out; the distance between them snaps shut, and he wraps his arms around her as tight as he knows how, grateful only that this time she's not bleeding, this time she's fine, that one more impossible time, through no effort of his own, she has returned to him whole. Wrapped in an embrace so hard her ribcage feels like it's going to explode, she flicks the safety on the gun and drops it on the floor; the clunk startles him, and so does the coldness of her still-dripping hands when they come up to the back of his neck trying to return the fierceness of his arms. Times like this they realize they've forgotten how to be sweet.

"It's okay, Roy," she whispers against his neck, into the coarseness of his black hair and the roughness of the stubble on his cheek. "Roy, it's okay." She says it as much for herself as for him. In the darkness of closed eyes and pounding hearts, gas lamp notwithstanding, it takes a long time for them to realize the proximity of lips and the lack of preying eyes to keep them separate. Barriers of propriety are another hard habit to pull down, but when they do, they kiss as though they could rip one another's hearts out through the mouth. If only they could live in one body, they could take care of one another so much better. They would never have to worry about what was happening while they were looking the other way. They would never have to worry about one of them getting stuck in this world while the other was forced to leave it. Riza believes that if that happened the separation would kill her; her heart would stop functioning the moment his breath stopped pushing the sun of her world to relentlessly circle the horizon. Roy is too jaded. Imagining the long years of struggling life without her, waiting for his body to grow old, is something he's never even wanted to consider—though consider it he has.

That night they couldn't go back to sleep. That night they made love as though it really was a matter of wrapping themselves in the other's peeled-off skin, drowning in shared pain until the scars on his hands and on her neck were just parts of their shared anatomy, no longer reminders of a hurt that went far beyond flesh. Mostly it's not that simple. Mostly they just sleep next to one another, sometimes touching, sometimes not, listening to the lullaby of their mingled breathing. They're tired, and there's always work in the morning. Some mornings they don't talk until they leave the house to deal with the rest of the world, and that's when they communicate without words, eating and drinking and going about their everyday business.

She brings him his coffee and that means, _Did you sleep well?_

He takes it and that means, _No, but I never do._

They sit across from one another at the kitchen table. He reads the news. _Let's see if there's anything better going on in the world today._ He gives the news page to her to read when he's done; she hands him the comics. _At least there's nothing _worse_ going on. Don't worry about it, we're doing what we can._

They wash the breakfast dishes together. _We're doing what we can._

Before getting ready to face what their life has become—the soldiers that will be springing up with schedules and invitations, the paperwork that is the Fuehrer's bane, the complaints, the decisions, the infrastructure to be built and dues to be paid—she straightens his lapels. _I'm watching your back, always._

They walk out the front door side by side, silent except for the tap of their feet, keeping pace with one another perfectly in the pause before the discussion of the day's duties begins, and that potent space between them means, _I love you_. It always has.


End file.
